Hey gang, just wondering about digital storage on trips. I have read the posts archived in tips/techniques....although agreeing with everyone that a laptop is the best way to go, I am curious about the alternative. I have heard that the Nikon CoolWalker is having mixed reviews and the Epson P2000 looks like the one to consider. Has anyone used either of these portable drives and how do like/dislike them...Our upcoming trip next month is rapidly approaching and we need to get all our ducks in a row.....shipping stuff into Cayman can take time, time we will run out of...Thanks in advance,

I just returned from a trip to Lembeh/Bunaken with my Epson P2000. I did 44 dives and used 30 of the 40 available gigabytes shooting RAW+med jpeg on my 20D. I was very happy with the device. Although I also brought a laptop, I was way too busy diving to use it much. The workflow I developed while there was to delete as many shots as I could in-camera, dump the keepers onto the P2000, then reformat/clear the CF card. Later, when I had a few minutes I would copy the best RAW shots into a separate best-of album on the P2000. When I had even more time (around 5:30AM) I would backup the best-of album onto my laptop. At the end of the trip I burned a backup of the best-of album onto 4 CD-Rs and placed them in my wife's carry-on bag.
Viewing and displaying my latest shots was much easier for me than for other photographers participating in the Asian Diver Mag shootout last week. The P2000 is faster and more portable than even the smallest laptops.

Interests:Sunlight reefs, warm water, fine wine, beautiful women. And Manchester City Football Club

Posted 14 August 2005 - 12:32 AM

Brad's P2000 sounds really good! I must take a look at that.

I've happily used a Nixvue Visa for the last few years. 20GB hard disk, accepts CF and micodrives without an adaptor, small-ish and highly portable; multi-voltage mains adaptor. Then only drawback is that reviewing RAW images is painfully slow. I use Brad's method: review in camera, delete the obvious garbage and then move the remainder to the Nixvue for later detailed review on a laptop.

But there is nothig like having your laptop with you to savour the good pics - and then burn a back-up CD/DVD before you get on the plane home.

Thanks for the tips! It sounds as your workflow made for easy downloading and backup! I will look into getting a P2000 for the trip, I think my wife is going to bring her laptop anyway so we can copy your workflow that seemed to work well for you. Let's see some of the Best OF shots from your trip Brad! Thanks for the advice guys.

I wonder if Tim from Macclesfield is my alter ego: I have also used a Nixvue Vista. Display and file-handling are very old-fashioned, but data storage and the firewire download to my laptop and desktop are very good. No lost files to date...

Interests:Sunlight reefs, warm water, fine wine, beautiful women. And Manchester City Football Club

Posted 14 August 2005 - 07:51 AM

Alter ego? I thought all we northerners (or near northeners) were related

I was living in Bermuda when I bought the Nixvue. There was no local dealer so I got on to Nixvue directly and they sold me two reconditioned Vistas for about $400! My dive buddy had one, I had the other - and they have been as good as gold. But that Epson P2000 looks seriously tempting.

I checked the Epson site a few minutes ago for RAW. They certainly handle Nikon and Canon RAW......

On my last trip I used my ipod photo. There's a connector (http://store.apple.c...rnMore=M9861G/A) that you plug in, connect to your camera via the USB port and away you go. You can only viuew the jpeg but uit does copy the RAW files too.

If you already have an ipod, this is an inexpensive way of being able to free up your CF card and take a look at your results.. THe Epson looks cool though if you're planning to invest in a new solution..

I just purchased a hard drive enclosure that includes a card reader.
The name is Wolverine. Has a 60gb hard drive and all I did in my last trip was to get a card in it, get my other card out of it and in the camera. That's all, no deletions, just keep everything and at home or whenever you have a chance you conect it to any computer and read it like an external hard drive.
The price was aprox $235.
The battery seems to be enoug for a 4 gb compact flash.
I'm sure you can find a ton of info if you just google "Wolverine"

I am contemplating getting extra external HD enclosure for downloading picture as well. If you don't need one with LCD monitor to view picture, the one that seems to get a lot of talk about is the Nexto unit. Basically it is a 2.5 inch HD enclosure with built in CF card reader that is very fast. With Sandisk Ultra II, you can download 1 GB in about 2-3 minutes.
You can use whatever 2.5 inch HD you want however the current firmware will support HD upto only 130 GB. Someone who has it told me that on a single charge, he can download well over 10 GB easily.
For LCD version, I think Epson is probably still the best out there currently but I believe it takes about 8 minutes to download 1 GB (also depending on CF card).

The Epson P2000 is a wonderful little device. Nice to take along if you gotta go light without a laptop. I found it odd, however, that you cannot reformat or defragment the Epson P2000 hard drive. I'm not sure how this will affect performance of the device over time.

Just back from a >1 month-long non-dive trip. Used a P2000 to store my images, which I managed to fill up; brought back remaining shots on 2 4GB CF cards. It worked well, never ran out of battery power.
It was convenient to show pix to others but had to make sure they did not touch the buttons - the one on the bottom (facing holder) takes you back to the 'homepage' of the gadget and is easy to touch when holding the P2000.
Scrolling for images on the HD of the P2000 is quite a bit slower than doing so on the CF card still in a D70 or D2H. The zoom function only works on jpegs, too bad.
Improvements should include faster processor, larger drive, and better interface ergonomics. Hopefully 'Moore's law' will apply to this class of gadget.
Tom

no image viewing but it takes standard laptop harddives, loads of life on AA batteries (somebody stated they managed 70GB on one charge on one of the high capacity units) - and look at those blazing transfer speeds.....